Genesis Films

This is an article I wrote for the Open Heaven Church website back in the days before this blog really existed. It's likely that the article will disappear from that site shortly, so I thought I ought to repost it before it disappeared forever.
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Of all the events narrated in the Bible, perhaps the hardest to picture, let alone understand, are those in Genesis. Whilst there have been several attempts by filmmakers to capture these formative events on celluloid, their most productive time was actually back in the silent period. The most comprehensive lists cite around 20 films on the various stories made during the silent period, and a further six in the first 10 years of the “talkie” period. By contrast, the past 70 years have only produced a similar number.

The first film made about a story in Genesis was the French film Joseph Vendu Par Ses Frères (Joseph Sold by his Brothers) made in 1904. Other notable films in this early period included 1928 silent version of Noah’s Ark (where allegedly some people actually died filming the spectacular flood scene[1]), and The Green Pastures (1936) a child’s daydreamed version of the stories she is hearing in Sunday School.

The Green Pastures was probably the first film to portray God, and certainly the first to portray him as a black man. Unsurprisingly the Ku Klux Klan were outraged and protested causing many theatre owners to refuse to show it. The Genesis scenes, being seen through a child’s imagination make no attempt to be realistic, but their gentle humour, and basic simplicity give the film a spiritual authenticity that is absent from the majority of these films.

Perhaps the best known Genesis film was made by John Huston in 1966. The Bible looked at the first 22 chapters of Genesis, starting with a wonderfully filmed creation sequence (voiced by Huston himself), and progressing through to Abraham and Isaac. The Bible was made at the end of the golden era of the biblical epic, and wisely avoids making this into a spectacular but camp, bathrobe drama. Instead its dark lighting gives much of the film a strange sense of the dawn of time, and the primitive nature of the cultures involved.

At the same time the literalism of the presentation will both find favour with those who take a more literal understanding of the “how” questions of creation, whilst also giving it the air of archetypal myth that adopt a more symbolic interpretation.

The Bible was the last Hollywood film based on the Old Testament for over 30 years, with the exception of Richard Gere’s 1985 turn as King David, (replete with his undignified monkey dancing in front of a returning Ark of the Covenant). Instead most bible films began to be made for the TV and the church market. Typical of this was the late seventies “Greatest Heroes of the Bible” series, which included the stories of Noah, The Tower of Babel, Sodom and Gomorrah, Abraham, Joseph. Around the same time the American organisation Campus Crusade (who made the 1979 Jesus film) made Genesis. This was a word for word, bland narration of the whole book accompanied by fairly uninspiring images which lasted for four long hours. It’s biggest plus point was it’s use of Middle Eastern actors, but it’s no surprise that none of them subsequently became the new Omar Sharif.

The eighties were a dry old time for cinematic versions of the book. Only the intriguingly titled Italian film Adam and Eve: The First Love Story and Mrinal Sen’s Hindi adaptation of the first five chapters were even made.

The nineties were a different matter. With Phil Collin’s namesake rock band out of the way, the bible’s opening tome was back in business. Whilst there were many Genesis movies made over that decade the majority were made by the Italian-American based company Lux Vide. Lux Vide put together 11 Old Testament stories as part of their “Bible Collection”, which also includes three New Testament films Jesus, Paul and The Apocalypse (my review), as well as four largely fictional spin offs, (each loosely based on a marginal New Testament character). Four of the Old Testament episodes were based on the events in Genesis - Creation and Flood, Abraham, Jacob and Joseph, and all four have their points of interest. Abraham, Jacob and Joseph frequently pierce the Sunday School cocoon that surrounds many tellings of these stories, both in cinema and other media, by including stories such as The Rape of Dinah, and Judah and Tamar that are so awkward, real, embarrassing and controversial that they are usually excluded completely. And the performances of Richard Harris, Sean Bean and Ben Kingsley respectively are usually worth watching in their own right.

Of the four, Genesis: Creation and Flood (1994) is possibly the jewel in the crown. Certainly it is strikingly different from the more traditional and straightforward tellings of the story that the other films give us. Instead of attempting to emulate the pattern of the earlier The Bible, or of the other films in the series, Genesis: Creation and Flood sets it’s own course. Covering the first eight and half chapters the film shows us the stories through the eyes of an old man telling his grandson the history of his people. Paul Schofield narrates in all but a few passages, only occasionally interrupted by a female counterpart.

The narration is accompanied by a striking series of images, occasionally interspersed by shots of Grandfather and the child, and other members of their family. It is an unusual effect. As Peter T Chattaway notes how normally you would be able to “follow any film's basic narrative thrust with the sound turned off… Genesis would fail that test”.[2]  In other words the narration shapes how the images are perceived. In a sense, this is like the act of creation itself, bringing form and order to the otherwise chaotic and unintelligible. The slow pacing of the film also gives it a meditative feel, enabling the audience to let the images wash over them whilst highlighting the words that drive them, and bring them meaning. This relaxed pace also brings a level of internal calm and thus transports the viewer to another time and another place far more effectively.

Ultimately then Creation and Flood is far more poetic than any of it’s predecessors, and it is ironic that a film which is essentially driven by such a narrative and literary work is ultimately so unliterary and poetic as a final product. It’s also interesting how the stress here on the story being passed down from generation to generation reflects the oral tradition that preceded and underlies the written text we have today.

Another film that takes this community narrative approach was a made for TV movie In the Beginning (2000). Martin Landau headed up a strong cast, playing Abraham; just four years after he had played Abraham’s grandson Jacob in the aforementioned Joseph. At over three hours, In the Beginning had plenty of time to cram in a number of these stories, and as a result, it could afford to continue well into Exodus. The creation scene here is also told by way of a flashback, but the sequence is so overloaded with explosive special effects, and cheap modern documentary footage it completely strips the event of its mystery and gravitas.

The end of the millennium brought with it a flood of biblical stories, and Genesis films were no exception. Chief amongst the offenders was another TV movie Noah’s Ark (1999), which was almost as unwelcome as the events it depicts. It is difficult to imagine what motivated the production of this film. Its attempt to weave futuristic elements into a pre-historic myth backfires more spectacularly than a seventies Robin Reliant. The bizarre futuristic elements evoke Kevin Costner’s mega flop Waterworld. Had that film been a success this at least could be called a cheap cash in, but as it was a commercial disaster that cannot have been the driving factor. Similarly terrible is the ludicrous attempt to pass off its idiotic amalgamation of the stories of Lot and Noah with the ridiculous off-hand comment “by the time they finish the story of Sodom and Gomorrah they will probably say we weren't even there."

The only potential merit of the film is that it solves the debate on God’s foreknowledge for ever. Noah’s Ark is so bad that if God had known the flood would spawn this stinker, he may have opted for another method of world destruction, (or at least have made sure that this was destroyed along with everything else). Frankly, it deserves every “wooden acting” joke that critics can throw at it.

Another poorly executed Genesis film is the straight to video Prince of Egypt  prequel   Joseph King of Dreams. The film does have some good points, notably the dream sequences which certainly benefit from a more creative and more expressive medium. However, the tiresome songs quickly become so dull that ultimately you begin to wonder if a spell in prison like Joseph’s might be far preferable.

Perhaps the best Genesis film of recent years (and of all time) is Cheick Oumar Sissoko’s La Genèse(1998). Sissoko’s film tells the story of Abraham’s family from an African perspective, and as a result, it is recorded in the Bambara language of Mali, spoken by only few million people. As a result La Genèse understands the nomadic tribal context in which these stories are set, far better than any number of  Hollywood films, and brings with it a number of fascinating insights.

It also refuses to lionise its protagonists, and emphasises just how dysfunctional this family was at times. Too often these characters have been stripped of their humanity, and shown simply as one dimensional heroes. La Genèse gives a more realistic picture which honours the God who uses such ordinary, broken unreliable people to further his will, and offers us hope that he can use us as well.

La Genèse is also beautifully filmed capturing the wonderful landscapes, and capturing something of the empty space that typified the world several thousand years ago. Nevertheless, at times the film is very stark and brutal in what it captures – starring unflinchingly at some of the more earthy elements of the story.

It’s the ability of this film to bring a new angle to well known and familiar stories that makes it so valuable. There have been many films on the various Genesis stories, but only a handful bring something insightful, interesting or challenging. Of these three stand out in particular. The Bible (1966) simultaneously shuns the worst excesses of the 50s and 60s Biblical Epics whilst subverting some of the genre’s standard features. La Genèse (1998) brings the tribal context to the fore, exploring the stories with an authenticity that is largely absent otherwise. Finally, Genesis: Creation and Flood (1994), offers us the chance to reflect on scripture anew as it draws attention to the poetic nature of the text.  

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[1] Various reports of this, the best online can be found at www.jimusnr.com/Noahsark.html

[2] www.canadianchristianity.com/cgi-bin/bc.cgi?bc/bccn/0501/artvideos

The Gospel of Mark (2016)

Years ago I ran a balloon debate on the subject of the four gospels. The participants were each given one of the four gospels, went away to do some preparation and then had to put forward their case as to why their gospel ought to remain at the expense of one of the others. Unsurprisingly, Mark lost. John is the most distinct, Matthew has the Sermon on the Mount, Luke has the Good Samaritan and the Prodigal Son, but what does Mark have? It's probably the oldest, but other than that most people would struggle to tell you much about its own distinctive take on the life, death and maybe resurrection of Jesus (but more on that later).

Mark's Gospel has also been a loser in another way - until the recent release of the Lumo Project's The Gospel of Mark it was the only canonical gospel not to have a word-for-word screen adaptation. Luke was adapted in the seventies, Matthew in the nineties and John just after the turn of the century, but despite rumours that the company who made those two, later, adaptations were planning to record a version of Mark's gospel, nothing ever materialised. Until now.

The Gospel of Mark has been released as part of the Lumo project, which has produced filmed versions of all four gospels. A not insubstantial part of the reason for the project getting this far is that it has taken a rather unusual approach. Instead of having actors recite their lines at the relevant moment in the film, all the text is spoken by an unseen narrator. The DVD even offers the choice to choose between Rupert Penry-Jones performing the NIV version of the Gospel, or Tim Piggott-Smith's reading of the King James. In contrast to the majority of films about Jesus, which tend to suggest they are getting back to the original historical figure, the use of narration really emphasises the textual nature of the gospel. It's a similar approach to that taken by the Genesis project's Gospel of Luke and Genesis in the 1970s. The characters voices can be heard faintly in the background, speaking Aramaic, but not loud enough to know whether they are speaking the words from Mark's gospel or Matthew's. This has allowed the producers to re-use the same footage in different films even though the precise wording of the two texts may vary. This also de-emphasises the the actors and their acting and places a greater emphasis on the actual text.

All of which raises a number of interesting issues, particularly for biblical scholars. Some might object, for example, that having the same footage re-used even though the wording is different rather underplays the differences between the gospels. Indeed at times the images don't quite fit the words that are being spoken. We see two donkeys in Jesus' entry into Jerusalem; darkness is said to come, when it manifestly doesn't and, most disappointingly of all, Gethsemane's streaker - one of Mark's most intriguing flourishes - is mentioned but absent.

This impression that  the differences between the gospels are being somewhat watered down is bolstered by the use of the same actor playing Jesus. Of course, that said, there was only one historical Yeshua so this approach is far from unwarranted. Furthermore the opposite can also be argued. Whilst the reusing the footage might suggest a marginally greater degree of harmony, it does highlight the fact that the latter gospel writers (particularly Matthew and Luke) did simply re-use large chunks of text (/footage) from Mark's gospel (and, in Luke's case either Matthew and/or Q as well).

Nevertheless, having noted the way the film emphasises text the film also has a strong emphasis on image. It is, at times, beautifully shot, with many of the establishing shots filmed in striking locations. Then there's also the choice of Selva Rasalingam as Jesus. Shorn of the ability to act with his delivery and intonation Rasalingam gives a very physical performance, of a strong, tough Jesus. Many filmmakers have talked about presenting a Jesus who could credibly have spent his younger years working as a tekton (builder/carpenter). This is certainly true of Rasalingam, but the strength in his performance is something far deeper.

It is also no a performance designed to win over fans cheaply and easily. Whilst once or twice he's a little over smiley for my tastes there are also times where his brusqueness will not appease those who like their Jesus' meek and mild, or to be constantly sporting a smile. You can never please everyone in this respect so I think the balance is about right, particularly for the Gospel of Mark, which of the four canonical portraits, puts the greatest emphasis on Jesus' humanity. It's a challenging portrayal, but in a way that asks good, honest questions about our preconceptions.

It's also nice to see some of the less popular episodes from Mark get treated, the miracles in particular. One of the distortions of biblical films is that they tend to focus on certain types of miracle. On the one hand there are those that are the most dramatic, or the most spectacular, that look the best on the big screen. On the other hand many filmmakers, choose miracles dependant on their acceptability to cynical modern viewers. 'Miracles' where more 'natural' explanations....

By restricting themselves to a particular text the filmmakers' choice as to which episodes to include are taken out of their hands. And so these less desirable incidents are included when usually they might not be. So here we see a series of exorcisms, hands healed, someone is given the ability to speak and those that were blind see. Mark's gospel is full of little healings like these, but they are often too understated, or repeated too often to get included in big, gospel-harmonising films. In this film, it's a fascinating reminder that Jesus wasn't just about grand set pieces but about changing individual lives. Few Jesus films contain any more than one exorcism, for example, but Mark's gospel is full of them and it's good to see that put on the screen for once, however out of kilter it seems to the modern world.

Not dis-similarly it's also good to see Jesus' apocalyptic predictions about the fall of Jerusalem captured on screen in its unadulterated entirety. It's only natural that the majority of filmmakers, omit, greatly abridge, alter or harmonise this speech. Sometimes the results are even rather impressive such as in Jesus of Montreal (1989). Obviously a variation on this speech has appeared in the Genesis Project's Luke and the Visual Bible's Matthew, but in those cases the sources texts have already changed the words we find in Mark. So it's good to see the original, with it's more this-worldly emphasis and its dramatic imagery. The film does well with this as well setting the scene round a campfire (a setting that captures the dark and fiery tone of the speech) but intercutting it with flash forwards to keep things interesting.

Having done this part so well, it's disappointing that the ending is so unimaginative. The agreed upon text of Mark appears to comes up short at chapter 16 verse 8 (before any sightings of the risen Jesus) and all we're left with is a series of fragments where others have sought to create a new ending. It's a scenario that suggested a series of interesting possibilities cinematically, particularly for an adaptation that puts such an emphasis on the Gospel's text. Sadly, all we get is the most popular of these endings presented as a piece with the rest of chapter 16. Whilst this is perhaps the least problematic and controversial solution, my inner Bible geek had hoped for something more creative and interesting here.

But that's just me, and probably shouldn't be taken too seriously. You see whilst Mark did lose out in that initial balloon debate, over time, it's gradually become my favourite. Indeed, in my estimation, it's even overtaken the gospel attributed to my namesake Matthew. I appreciate the way that Mark is less varnished than Matthew and Luke (both of whom took it and amended it for their particular purposes). I value its breathless, hurried, style. I enjoy its many mysteries such as the ambiguous, possibly lost, ending.

Whilst Lumo's Gospel of Mark isn't primarily aimed at Mark-geeks like me, it does do a good job of bringing many of those aspects to the screen and like the other entries in the series is generally well put together. It may be the last of the gospels to make it onto film, but it's certainly one of the strong attempts at this kind of word for word adaptation.

Genesis Project: Luke Ch.1-4

Having worked through Matthew's gospel a couple of months ago with the Visual Bible series, I've now moved onto Luke. (Last month was Mark for which there is no word for word version). I'm not going to have the time to write on this one as extensively as Matthew, so this will be in four or so parts (one per video cassette) rather than 14.

The story behind this film is rather complicated, and the signs of this complexity are most obvious in these opening chapters. Back in 1974 John Heyman founded the Genesis Project, also known as the New Media Bible (not in the sense New Media means today). He wanted to film the entire Bible, and began work in 1976, but only got as far as making chapters 1 and 2 of Luke before he realised he was going to need a lot more money. So Heyman decided to team up with Bill Bright of Campus Crusade for Christ. Bright and his organisation would help fund Heyman's project and in return he'd make them a shorter Jesus film that could be used as an evangelistic tool. The film was to become known as The Jesus Film and it was released in 1979. Heyman figured the film would help promote his project as well as fund it. John Dart has written a more detailed account on the back story to this project and that film, and there's a 2003 thread at Arts and Faith where Peter Chattaway and I discuss how the two projects relate.

What's strange is that the two productions have different nativity scenes. By the time the movie came to being released, the films of the first couple of chapters of Luke had been around for three years. In the meantime the actress that played Mary was now unavailable and Heyman decided not to use the new footage to spruce up the start of the word-for-word film.

The series starts with Luke on a hill reading from a scroll. We get an establishing shot of Zechariah and Elizabeth so we know who he is in the following scene at the temple. Both Zechariah and Mary are visited by an angel with a big afro-style hair cut. This is shot quite effectively with the light behind him in order to give the impression of a halo.

One of the curious aspects of this film is that, in contrast to the later Visual Bible film, it appears to be entirely narrated. What's even more unusual is that we can here that the film also features a background track in Aramaic. So Mel Gibson was not exactly breaking new ground by using Aramaic in The Passion of the Christ despite what some people claimed at the time.

These comments aren't so much a formal review as just some extended notes on the film as I watch it, so I'll just chuck in a minor observation here that when Jesus is presented in the temple and meets Simeon and Anna, we also see Zechariah. This links nicely to the next scene where Zechariah's son, a particularly scraggly John the Baptist, in baptising people in the River Jordan. We see Jesus baptised, and an actual dove land on his shoulder. According to Brian Deacon (Jesus) this scene was horrendous to film as it involved him standing in cold water for hours whilst they tried to entice the dove to land on his bird-seed covered shoulder. That anecdote however does serve to highlight a subtle change that Luke makes to Mark (and Matthew's text). Whilst in all three gospels the dove is only a simile - the Holy Spirit descends "as a dove" - only Luke stresses that this happens "in bodily form". In the other three gospels the implication is that this is imagery, rather than an actual bird.

One of the biggest hurdles in filming Luke is the genealogy. True it's not as potentially problematic as in Matthew, where it's right at the beginning and so likely to scare some people off before they even get started. Nevertheless it's very easy to make such a scene deathly boring. What Heyman and Sykes do is narrate the list of Jesus' ancestors over an action shot of him walking. In contrast to the Visual Bible version only rarely do we see "Luke" and as this is our first introduction to Jesus and he is almost marching through a rugged terrain, it's actually fairly engaging.

Jesus' destination is the desert where he will be tempted. The devil is represented by a snake, which, it could be argued, is perhaps the best physical approach to portraying Satan in a Jesus film. It's not time bound, or so open to interpretation as many other approaches. That said I don't think I can recall a film which portrays this as all being in Jesus' mind, although Scorsese's take might be interpreted that way. The latter two temptations are depited by frosting in an inset of relevant images. It turns out that these are actually taken from the model of Jerusalem and the temple from the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. As I've been using the stills of this model found at the IMJ's website it was strange to see the model pop up so obviously in the film. It's a good way of making this sequence more interesting at a very low cost however.

One of the best scenes in the Jesus film also occurs in these opening four chapters: Jesus delivering his gospel manifesto and his resulting rejection at Nazareth. I made some comments on this scene a few weeks back which I'll reproduce here for ease:

This film is an adaptation of Luke so it's not surprising to find that it's the one that most closely corresponds to that gospel. We see Jesus sitting on the floor and covering his head and kissing the scriptures before reading them. The wording here is pretty much as per the gospel. It even includes Jesus being brought to the cliff edge though whilst the narrator describes Jesus walking through the middle of the crowd we only see him walk away from them.

This film differs however in one crucial way. Whereas in the Jesus film an audience member links Jesus' words with a claim to be the messiah, in this production no such claim is made. The narrator sticks to the text which, in fact, doesn't link Jesus' declaration to a claim to be the messiah . In the text, Jesus causes an uproar not because of any messianic claim, but because he anticipates his rejection by the Nazarenes (and, by implication, the Jewish people in general) and predicts God working amongst the Gentiles instead.

The tape ends at the end of chapter 4 with the healings of a demon-possessed man, Simon Peter's mother-in-law and the crowds that come to Jesus when words of these miracles gets around.

(This production is only available on VHS, and it's pretty rare, although there is one copy for sale at jesusonscreen.com).

Noah adaptations p04: How Genesis develops the flood story

This is part 4 of a series investigating adaptations of the "Noah" story.

"Noah’s Ark" by Greek painter Theodore Poulakis (1622–1692).

In the last part of this series on adaptations of Noah, I looked at the variations of the flood story that were brought together to form Genesis, namely the Priestly and non-Priestly material, but what I didn't go into was some of the key changes those two "sources" and the "final" text of Genesis makes to the Babylonian traditions before them.

These changes are fairly wholesale, which is partly because I'm compressing a few layers of evolution into one, but even focusing on a theoretical reconstruction of the J source and comparing it to the Gilgamesh Epic unearths a very different text. It's a radical overhaul, far more akin to an appropriation than an adaptation. However, as J is still, very much, a theoretical text I'm going to stick to comparing the text of Genesis we find in our Bibles today with the Gilgamesh epic.

Noah

One of the major difference is, of course, the change of identity of the flood hero, from Utnapishti to Noah. In the last entry in this series I looked at where Noah as a character may have emerged from (the first viniculturist), but it's also worth pointing out how that contrasts with Utnapishti.  Utnapishti is an immortal character (at least by the time he is telling his story), Noah is mundanely human. After the events of the flood Utnapishti recalls the god Ea declaring that "he and his wife shall become like us gods!" ( Noah seemingly returns to 'normal life'. Utnapishti now lives in a remote, almost entirely inaccessible place, whereas Noah lives out amongst his descendants.

There's also much more of a sense of Noah's being of no particular rank. Utnapishti is described as having (pre-flood) silver and gold, oxen and lambs, beer and ale, oil and wine and workmen (XI:71-86). Onto the ark he brings kith covering "Members of every skill and craft" (XI:86).¹ Noah just has his family and saves them alone. Yet by the time Gilgamesh meets Utnapishti, there's no mention of his children and descendants. His wife is present -- she even gets some dialogue -- but the two might even live alone. So Noah is a much more relatable, normal, family-driven character.

That said, it's striking how Genesis removes Noah's voice completely. Utnapishti speaks at length to recite his tale, yet even within that there is a sense of him speaking with the gods, back and forth. Noah, some unusually within the Hebrew Bible, does not debate with God, he gets no voice at all. 

One key line of dialogue that is dropped is XI:35 "but how do I answer my city, the crowd and the elders". This concern -- absent from Noah in Genesis -- is often perceived as a lack. As we shall see in the Qu'ran Noah goes to great lengths to preach to the crowd to try and save them even though he is unsuccessful (Sura 71). Many schools of Judaism put Noah on a lower pedestal than other biblical heroes for his lack of compassion or arguing with God, see for example this interview with Shmuley Boteach for the "Times of Israel" where he says: 

Noah is not a hero in Jewish lore. ...righteousness is all about what you do for your fellow man. And Noah does NOTHING for his fellow man. He doesn’t care, he has no compassion. He executes God’s commandment to the letter. So when God says “I’m going to kill everybody,” Noah says, “will you save my skin? Oh, I get an Ark? Okay, fine.” ...he failed in the greatest mission of all. He failed to protect human life. And failed to fight with God when he wanted to take human life. He refuses to wrestle with God. ²

Genesis, unusually for the Hebrew Bible, cuts the flood hero 's objections to God's plans to "blot out from the earth human beings" (6:7), but it's hard to know if this is for theological reasons, or simply because Genesis cuts Noah's voice altogether.

Monotheism

Of course, theologically speaking the biggest shift in the Genesis account is the move from a pantheon of gods, to just the one (although P names him Elohim whereas J calls him YHWH). In Gilgamesh the gods act, to some extent, independently. The decision to send the flood seems to rest largely with Enlil, albeit with the help of various weather gods (XI:97-108). Yet at the same time, some of "the gods took fright at the deluge" (XI:114) and when Utnapishti makes an offering after it's all over we're told the gods gather and are pleased by the smell of it and criticise Enlil for almost destroying humanity but for Ea's intervention (XI:157-171).

This contrasts with the Genesis where the one god deems humanity deserving of judgement and decides to send the flood, but preserves only the righteous Noah and his family, almost like some kind of theological selective breeding programme. Noah is not saved because one particular god acts to save the gods from the consequences of the reckless actions one of his colleagues. He is chosen because he is the only righteous human and his descendants represent the best chance of faithful behaviour in future.

Motivation for flood

The logical question from there is why did the gods/God want to wipe out humanity in the first place. Here we see an evolving tradition. In the Atrahasis Epic, it is because the humans have become so numerous that they are now too loud and preventing the gods from sleeping. The Gilgamesh Epic does not specify exactly why the gods want to "diminish" humanity (XI:189-91), but given its overall thematic concern about humanity's negative impact on the environment it may well be due to concern about the environmental consequences of over-population.

Genesis removes the ambiguity and changes the motivation. Now rather than being motivated by noise or environmental degradation, the issue is sinful behaviour. God is displeased by "wickedness...evil...violence" (Gen 6:5-13). Whilst there's some debate, the preceding verses (6:1-4) seem to be deliberately connected here to the rest of the story to give an example of exactly the kind of thing that God is displeased with (the "sons of God" having sex with the "daughters of man").

It's perhaps here that the authors intentions show most strongly. We move from subservient minor gods attempting to extinguish humanity so they can get better quality sleep; through to a more cautionary tale about respecting the "natural" world the gods inhabit; through to a sense of a single God with clear moral objections to human behaviour.

Fruitful and multiply 

There is another place where the author of Genesis also shows their hand fairly clearly, and in contrast to his predecessors. After the flood and Noah's subsequent sacrifice God gives Noah a new covenant, which starts in 9:1-2 with the words

Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth. The fear and dread of you shall rest on every animal of the earth, and on every bird of the air, on everything that creeps on the ground, and on all the fish of the sea; into your hand they are delivered. (NRSV)

And as if to further reinforce the point later he repeats "be fruitful and multiply, abound on the earth and multiply in it." (v7)

There's a couple of points to make here. Firstly that this is something of an about turn on both Gilgamesh and Atrahasis where the point of the story seems to be a warning that the gods want to keep human numbers in check. Ea may intervene and criticise Enlil for almost wiping them out completely, but his criticism is not that it is inherently wrong, just that it went too far and didn't consider the downside. His suggestions of options Enlil could have taken instead (lion/wolf/famine/plague) area would all still have substantially reduced the human population.

Of course, God's drastic action equally reduces the human population, but his action is to reduce evil and to start again. As soon as (he thinks) that is done, then he orders Noah and his family to get on with re-populating the Earth. Gilgamesh's environmental concerns about a growing human population are not a concern here. The opposite is positively encouraged and the genealogies that follow demonstrate how Noah and his descendants fulfilled this element of their mandate.*

'Dominion' and dread

This brings me on to the second point here, which is that this should be no surprise to anyone reading Genesis from the (literal!) beginning because in Genesis 1:28 God has already said: 

Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.’ (NRSV)

There's a lot that could be written here about the echoing of this passage, how it suggests God is rebooting; how this time God makes a slight change and allows humans to eat meat. But I mainly want to point out that these are the classic anti-environmental clobber texts -- verses that have been used in the past to justify ruthlessly exploiting the planet for our own gain.

Way back in 1967 Lynn White Jr. wrote an influential article "The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis" which argued that Christianity "not only established a dualism of man and nature but also insisted that it is God’s will that man exploit nature for his proper ends".³ White's claims have generally been taken as true, though they do lack a certain nuance. Richard Bauckham, for example, describes White's article as "bursting with confident and ill-substantiated generalizations",⁴ and claims that such an interpretation of these passages is only relatively recent. Instead he argues that it "was Francis Bacon, in the seventeenth century, who hijacked the Genesis text to authorise the project of scientific knowledge and technological exploitation whose excesses have given us the ecological crisis".⁵

In practical terms Bauckham's arguments are largely academic (so to speak). Prior to Bacon, and whether it knew it or not) humanity had comparatively little impact on its environment relative to subsequent events. Deforestation in some areas had certainly been considerable (much of the forests in Britain had been cleared during the Bronze Age,⁶ for example), but the Industrial Revolution hugely increased humanity's ability to destroy its environment. And, Bacon and those with similar views absolutely used such passages in Genesis to justify their reckless approach to the planet. 

Thus even if it would not be for another two millennia or so, the change of emphasis by the author of Genesis took a story warning of environmental harm and changed it in to a narrative that would play a significant role in bring such harms into being.

The 'Ark'

There's another change here as well that tallies with my "green issues" approach to this subject. In my introductory post to this series, I mentioned that it was going to address "adaptation in an era of changed weather patterns and human responses to that, and the idea that adaptation has parallels with recycling". I noted in post 2 that line 4 of Finkel's flood tablet (part of the Atrahasis Epic) "destroy your house, build a boat" (repeated in Gilgamesh) are essentially a command to recycle, albeit driven by necessity rather than green ethics.⁷

In Genesis that initial sense of urgency has gone. The "ark" is no longer an improvised craft but a meticulously planned construction. While a little of this transition occurs in Gilgamesh, the time scale remains at 7 days. When we come to Genesis God gives no indication when the flood will arrive leaving speculation to vary from between 7 days (as in the sources) and 75 years, based on a calculation of Noah's age when his eldest son was born and his recorded age when the flood begins.

In Gilgamesh, the boat is square (XI: 28-30), a cube even, 10 rods in each dimension, covering an area of one acre with six decks (XI:57-61). In Genesis the ark (which literally just means "box"),⁸ has become elongated -- 300 cubits long, but only 50 wide and 30 high (that's 133m x 22m x 13m, Gen 6:15), which actually works out at only 0.75 of an acre, with only three decks. 

I can't help wondering if this new shape and dimension reflect the temple or the Ark of the Covenant in some way (even though both are translated as "ark" in English, the Hebrew uses two different words, both of which mean just "box"), particularly given the likely time of composition -- perhaps just as Noah finds sanctity in the Noah, so the tribes of Israel should find it in the temple; or just as God protects and honours Noah and his family in the ark so too the Ark of the Covenant is worthy of special treatment, or something like that. For the record Solomon's temple was 60 cubits long, 20 wide and 30 high (1 Ki 6:2) and perhaps also had 3 floors (1 Ki 6:6) the Ark of the Covenant was made from "acacia wood; it was two and a half cubits long, a cubit and a half wide, and a cubit and a half high" (Ex 37:1).      

Lastly we get a change in materials. In The Flood Tablet's version of the Atrahasis Epic the coracle is made from the recycled reeds and "kannu ropes and ašlu rushes... fronds and palm fibre" (lines 10 & 11).⁹ In the Gilgamesh Epic again we get reeds (XI:21-4) and "ropes of palm-fibre". In Genesis we get what the KJV translates as "gopher wood" with the NKJV and NASB following suit, but other recent versions (NEB, NRSV, NLV) translate as "cypress wood", with the NRSV noting (accurately) that "meaning of Heb uncertain". The Ark of the Covenant was made of acaia wood (Ex 37:1) and the temple was of stone construction but had cedar walls and fir/cypress floors (1 Ki 6:7,15), though there are  two Hebrew words that the NRSV translate . So while Noah's Ark is made of a more solid wood than Atramhasis' and Utnapishti's boats, which increases similarities with the temple/Ark of the Covenant we're not talking about the same material and the requirements for source preparing and building with it seem like a greater task than its Mesopotamian counterparts. The main takeaway is that it's no longer a recycled, improvised craft. but a solid, very much premeditated one.

Others

I'm aware the above are very much my selection of the ways that the story changes, and that in making that selection I have overlooked some real whoppers. I spoke in the last instalment of this series about the addition of seven pairs of clean animals coming from the non-Priestly material in 7:2, but there are a number of other major ones depending on the angle you're coming from. For example, I've not mentioned the omission of the swallow, the 2nd of the three birds Utnapishtim sends out, or the window/zohar that gets added to the roof of Noah's boat, or the name of the mountain on which they run aground. There's obviously quite a lot, but I hope what I have included gives some indication as to how the changes reflect the theology and beliefs that the story in Genesis is promoting and/or reinforcing.

=============

1. All quotations taken from The Gilgamesh Epic taken from Andrew George's translation [CITATION]

2. Hoffman, Jordan (2014) "Hollywood ‘Noah’ is kosher, says celebrity rabbi" in The Times of Israel 27th March. Available online: https://www.timesofisrael.com/hollywood-noah-is-kosher-says-celebrity-rabbi/

*. I actually owe this observation (inserted after initial publication) to James Wykes's thesis The Contextualized Noah: The Deluge Patriarch in Genesis, Jubilees, and Pseudo-Philo (2012) available from Academia.

3. White, Lynn Jr. (1967) "The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis" in Science, New Series, Vol. 155, No. 3767 (Mar. 10, 1967), pp. 1203-1207. p.1205. Available online: https://www.exeter.ac.uk/media/universityofexeter/collegeofhumanities/theology/beyondstewardship/files/HistoricalRoots_of_EcologicalCrisis_(1).pdf

4. Bauckham, Richard (2002) God and the Crisis of Freedom: Biblical and Contemporary Perspectives (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press) p.219.

5. Bauckham, Richard (2010) Bible and Ecology: Rediscovering the Community of Creation (Waco: Baylor University Press) p.6

6. Thomson, Hugh (2012) "The Sherwood Syndrome" at Aeon 12th September. Available online: https://aeon.co/essays/who-chopped-down-britains-ancient-forests

7. Finkel, Irving (2014) The Ark Before Noah: Decoding the Story of the Flood, (London: Hodder), p.376.

8. Rachelle Gilmour as interviewed by Dave Roos and Helen Bond in "Ep. 68 A Face-Melting Look at the Ark of the Covenant" for the Biblical Time Machine podcast. Relevant clip is from 5 minutes. Available online: https://www.biblicaltimemachine.com/listen-to-episodes/b24fssktgs7yzxz-scarm-bxjxm-jr9y7-khjbb-zn9dd-w9jgd-lc4nj-w8mhr-x6662-en45b-6crbr-cw5tr-ye69n-cbkng 

9. Finkel, p.377

Noah adaptations p05: Jewish Texts After the Hebrew Bible

This is part 5 of a series investigating adaptations of the "Noah" story.

"The Animals Entering Noah's Ark" (1570s) by Jacopo Bassano

In the last part of this series on adaptations of Noah, I looked at the variations of the flood story that were brought together to form Genesis. Now I want to turn to how Jewish writers continued to amend and adapt the flood narrative after Genesis had been written. While the number of Jewish sources that do something with the flood narrative are too numerous to track, I'm going to focus on the main ones here, written in the Second Temple (intertestamental) period, beyond into the era following the fall of Jerusalem in 70 

CE to the later part of the first millennium CE.

I've laid out the most relevant sources in a rough chronological order, though I should point out that dates are nearly always disputed, and vaguer than the dates I cite. I just find it useful to find an approximate middle of the range to help establish what is likely to have come before what. (DSS = Dead Sea Scrolls)

200 BCE - The Book of Enoch 
200 BCE - The Book of Jubilees

100 BCE - DSS - Genesis Apocryphon (1Q20/1QapGen)

50 BCE - DSS - Pesher/Commentary on Genesis (4Q252/4QPGen)

40 BCE - DSS - Flood Apocryphon/Admonition Based on the Flood (4Q370)

80 CE - Pseudo-Philo (Liber Antiquitatum Biblicarum)

94 CE - Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews

400 CE - Bereshit of Rabbah (Genesis Rabbah)

500 CE - Sanhedrin 108b (Babylonian Talmud)

600 CE - Sibylline Oracles

750 CE - Tanchuma Noach (Tanhuma Noah or Tanakh Noah)

1000 CE - Sefer ha-Yashar (Tole dot Adam, Book of Jasher)

Enoch

The Jewish source that is most frequently mentioned in relation to Noah (2014) is the Book of Enoch, a composite work of five smaller books that was compiled sometime "between the late fourth century B.C.E. and the turn of the era".¹ I want to get into this in a bit more detail, so I'm going to return to it in part 6.   

Jubilees

The Book of Jubilees is a rewriting of the material found in book of Genesis and the start of Exodus from the second century B.C.E.². The Dead Sea Scrolls included sections from 15 different manuscripts, roughly the same number of copies as they had of Genesis itself, so it was certainly popular among the Essene community³. The relevant passage starts with the last verse of chapter 4 and runs through to the fifteenth verse of chapter 6.  Most of the story remains intact, though the references to the animals on the ark is reduced to an afterthought. There's no mention of them entering two by two, let along seven pairs of clean animals and one pair of unclean.

This is unusual, because Jubilees tends to elaborate on the Genesis text quite a lot and many of those additions seem quite fastidious. In stark contrast to the absent details about the animals entering the ark, the list of the animals Noah sacrifices afterwards is very specific. Indeed, in general, the new material seems to be intended to reflect cultic practice. There's a great deal of concern about consuming blood, for example. That said, more general principles such as not killing other people (shedding blood) and about justice also come through quite strongly.

In my previous piece in this series I mentioned how the gods' attempt to depopulate the earth is turned on its head in Gen 9:1 and Jubilees 6:5 repeats the command to "increase and multiply yourselves on the earth and become numerous upon it", as well as the promise that "I will put fear of you and dread of you on everything that is on the earth and in the sea" [James VanderKam's 2018 translation]. It's funny, the "fear and dread" is in Genesis too, but I've never noted it before – a widening of the rift between humanity and its environment.

Lastly, one point relating to the Aronofsky adaptation in particular. In the film, Madison Davenport plays Ham's wife, who is called Na'el. As Peter Chattaway points out the name is a shortened form of Ne-el-atamauk, which derives from Jubilees 7:14).⁴

Dead Sea Scrolls 

Genesis Apocryphon (1Q20, IQapGen) has large parts missing, but is still arguably the most interesting account of Noah amongst the Dead Sea Scrolls. It dates from somewhere between 3rd century BCE and 1st century CE and was one of the seven scrolls that were first discovered, though the last to be translated because of its poor state. What we have starts with the "miraculous" birth of Noah in col.II and runs on into the life of Abram in col.XXII.⁵ Much of the Noah story is fragmentary, but of what remains we begin with his father Lamech's concern about how the yet to be born Noah will turn out. He asks his father (Methuselah) who in turns asks his father Enoch, who is held to be properly in touch "with the holy ones" (col.II:20).⁶. Collins observes how the "Genesis Apocryphon (ca. first/second century BCE) shares a number of features with both 1 Enoch and Jubilees, including the role of the Watchers".⁷ 

Cols III to XI are reduced to just a few phrases, but there's enough of col.VII to be able to figure out that now it's Noah that is speaking, recounting the events in the past tense. This is the first time since the flood hero became Noah that he has had a voice (aside from to curse Ham/Canaan). The first sentence particularly stands as Noah is recalling God's promise that he will "rule the earth and all there is in it" which feels like an expansion of what has gone before.⁸ Col. XII is better preserved and contains a few details of his family and a bit more about his vineyard. Collins notes that this is where the idea of Noah hearing God through visions, rather than words, is first found (e.g. XII:1).⁹

Fragment 4Q370, dating from around 160 BCE to 60 BCE almost has more titles than extant words (see here). It's variously called "A Flood Apocryphon", "Admonition Associated with the Flood",¹⁰ or "Exhortation Based on the Flood"  (Martinez).¹¹ The only bit that really stands out is the specific mention that "the giants did not escape". This seems to be in contrast with other traditions, that seek to explain the existence of giants/Nephilim after the flood in the Bible (not only Goliath, but those mentioned in Numbers 13:33) with a story of Og king of Bashan riding on a unicorn to stay alive (Zevachim 113b in The Talmud). See here, here and here for more on that...

Genesis Pesher (4Q252) also called a "Commentary on Genesis A". "Pesher" is a fairly terse retelling of the story, adding almost nothing and abridging the material quite significantly though typically it's employing a more disciplined word count than excising elements of the story. The most obvious actual omission seems to be that of the animals with a single dove being the only mention of animals in the whole text. It also clarifies the timings and mentions the 364-day calendar (as does "Jubilees").¹² It dates from around mid-1st century BCE to late 1st century CE.

(Pseudo) Philo

As with the Book of Jubilees the word "polluted" also crops up in Pseudo-Philo, but in an entirely different context. Pseudo-Philo, more formally called the Liber Antiquitatum Biblicarum, was "produced in Palestine in the first century AD... (covering)... the story of Israel from Adam to David".¹³ It generally abridges the biblical text, such that the inclusion of the flood story is notable in itself given the omission of most of the rest of Genesis. The Noah (or Noe) story is found in Chapter III flanked by genealogies of Noah's ancestors and descendents. 

The most significant addition to the text is an apocalyptic section that comes immediately after God's promise not to destroy the world again (III:9). Following a pivotal "but" God launches into a promise to punish sin by famine / the sword / fire / death / scattering through the nations / earthquakes and from there moves onto a prediction what will happen when "the times are fulfilled". These are similarly apocalyptic in tone (and here I use the term in both the colloquial and the technical sense), using phrases that will bring to mind the more apocalyptic parts of the New Testament (such as Revelation).

This use of "polluted" comes in III:10 in the middle of the various predictions of destruction and judgement. God adds in that despite "none shall be polluted that hath been justified in me" before going on to promise "another earth and another heaven". Again this is clearly being used in a very different sense to how we the word would typically be used today, albeit in a way that it might be used in certain circumstances.

What is particularly interesting though is how the insertion of this apocalyptic passage fits with Aronofsky's intentions. Like Pseudo-Philo he too is retelling the story of Noah while casting an eye on a more cataclysmic future. As Pseudo-Philo sought to warn his audience of the perils of living wrongly through the language and style of the apocalyptic genre, so too Aronofsky use the language and style of the disaster movie genre to encourage his audience to live in a more environmentally conscious manner.

It's also worth mentioning that while quite a lot of the story is truncated, James Wyke finds the removal of the story about Noah's drunkenness particularly significant.¹⁴ It's a much longer piece and I'm not sure he reads the Jewish apocalyptic genre correctly, but he finds Pseudo-Philo's airbrushing of "the one flaw in his character" contrasts with how early church fathers made excuses for his drunkenness.¹⁵ Essentially though, the effect is the same, sanitising Noah's reputation to present him in more saintly fashion.

Josephus

Josephus's retelling of the story in his "Antiquities" is interesting because in a sense it does what I have been attempting to do: set out the story in a broader historical context. Not only does it offer more dates and numbers than even Genesis itself, but there's a remarkable passage where Josephus stops to discuss how "the writers of barbarian histories" (93) also mention the flood. He agrees with them that the ark's final resting place was a mountain in Armenia.

Give the eco-critical nature of my current project, I'm really struck by Josephus' use of the word "polluted" even if he is using it differently from its typical use today (of course, it's his translators -- William Whiston in my case -- that landed on that word, but you get my point). Following Noah's post-flood sacrifice, Josephus has God say that it was he (God) "who brought the destruction on a polluted world, but that they underwent that vengeance on account of their own wickedness". 

What I find interesting about this is while Josephus/Whiston mean this in the sense of sin/evil it does echo something of Aronofsky's ideas about modern-day humanity destroying its world through chemical/CO₂ pollution. And we could add that in previous versions of this story it was noise pollution that was the issue.

The other thing that links to Aronofsky's film is in v75 which says God "determined to destroy the whole race of mankind, and to make another race that should be pure from wickedness" this is actually consistent with the thought process of Aronofsky's Noah who sees humankind's total destruction as God's plan. The difference is that in the film Noah is dissuaded from ending his race by his family, whereas in Josephus following the first flood Noah seems to talk God out of sending a flood of that magnitude ever again. 

This seems to cue up Josephus's take on humanity's power over the creatures. He extends things a little further than the Genesis account saying "I permit you to make use of all the other living creatures at your pleasure, and as your appetites lead you; for I have made you lords of them all". The sense that the rest of creation is their for humans to exploit seems to have expanded a bit.

Finally, one of Josephus' major elaborations of the text is a discussion about the length of years that Noah and those before him lived (104f). Here too he refers to writers from other nations who "agree" with him that "the ancients lived a thousand years". He also finds an astrological basis for their longevity, essentially that they had to live over 600 years to observe a full cycle of the stars.

Genesis Rabbah (Bereshit Rabbah?)

Bereshit Rabbah is a midrash/"running commentary" on Genesis from around 300 CE to 500 CE of which the Noah-related material runs to about about 100 pages in Freedman's 1961 translation into English.¹⁶ This is obviously an enormous amount of material (given the NRSV text of Gen 6:1-10:1 in English is only around 2270 words). As well as the numbers of Rabba's verses, I'll also cite Freedman's page numbers alongside them as a copy of his third addition is available via Internet Archive. Page numbers for other sources are below as normal).

Actually though the relevant parts of this source come from before the Noah story even really starts in 23:3 (p.194). The name Aronofsky's film gives to Noah's wife's name is Naameh, who here is identified as both the sister of Tubal-Cain and Noah's wife.¹⁷. Not all contributions from Bereshit Rabbah are so conventional. Lee notes how 28:8 (p.22) claims “the dog [copulated] with the wolf, the fowl with the peacock” and are also deemed guilty in contrast to the film's attempt to "exonerate the animals from guilt".¹⁸ 

However, there is quite a bit here that has a potential environmental spin on it. Neril and Dee note how "Noah actually planted the trees from which he would take the wood for the Ark" (30:7, p.235).¹⁹ Sustainable forestry is easier when you live to over 600 years old, I guess. 

Neril and Dee have two other interesting observations in this vein. Firstly, they make the point several times  that the designation of one of the three levels of the ark for animal excrement (31:11, p.245 "garbage" alternately translated in n5) embodies an eco-friendly approach. Not only does it show care for the animals (providing a "clean, healthy living space" p.21), it also pioneers "organic fertilizer" (p.20) or "compost" (p.26).²⁰ A good use for this compost would have been to help "revitalize the land" after the flood,²¹ when we're told in 36:3 (p.289) Noah planted "vine shoots for planting, and young shoots for fig trees and olive trees" that he had brought onto the ark. The rabbis speculated that he'd also used those shoots as part of providing a varied and appropriate diet for the animals (31:14, p.247). 

 

The other key instruction about the construction of the ark concerns its source of light which revolves around Gen 6:16. The rabbis elaborate onn of differing understandings of the word tzohar. (which is "linguistically distinct" from the word zohar).²² It's a hapax legomenon which modern English Christian bibles tend to translate as "roof", older Christian English bibles translate as "window" and some Jewish English translations choose "light" based on the similar word zohar (literally 'shine'/'radiant').²³ Back in  200CE or thereabouts Targum Yonatan translated it as "precious stone". Here the writers elborate. Noah "did not require the light of the sun by day or the light of the moon by night, but he had a polished gem which he hung up" (31:2, p.244).

Neril and Dee bring these three elements together to conclude that "The Ark was a 'green building,' with a window for natural lighting from the sun, a whole floor dedicated to a composting of animal waste, and wood from forests Noah planted according to the midrash" a "reference to organic fertilizer".²⁴

Given all this, it's perhaps not surprising that Genesis Rabbah stresses one key difference between the text of Genesis 1:28 and the similar words in Gen 9:1-2. Despite the other similarities the word "dominion" is now missing, 34:12 (p.278) it notes "dominion did not return", even if the author(s) see(s) it as returning later.

Seth Sanders (cited on p.15 in Collins) also claims this adaptation gives Noah his first line of dialogue. "Genesis Rabbah helped make the flood filmable by giving Noah his first lines of dialogue and bringing in Tubal-Cain (as Noah’s father-in-law)".²⁵ Strictly speaking, he's wrong of course. Noah speaks even in the text of Genesis itself where having remained silent for almost the entire story, he pipes up right at the end to curse his grandson. But that's not really his point. The additional dialogue and family relationships Bereshit Rabbah introduce dramatic elements to the biblical narrative.

Sanhedrin 108 (Babylonian Talmud)

The (Babylonian) Talmud consists of six sedarim, which comprise of a total of 60 (or 63) tractates. Sanhedrin is one of these tractates. While Sanhedrin subdivides into 11 chapters, it's more common to reference the relevant folio directly, so we're looking at the 108th folio. These are still quite large Sanhedrin 108 consists of about 3000 words, though is usually divided into two parts "a" and "b". Dating is sometime between late 5th to "the formal closure of the Talmud, in about 600CE".²⁶ 

108a is mainly taken with describing the "generation of the flood" in very negative terms as you might imagine. It's hard not to think of some of Tubal-Cain's speeches in the 2014 film, when one reads words such as these

Depart from us; for we desire not the knowledge of thy ways. What is the Almighty, that we should serve him? And what profit should we have, if we pray unto him? They said thus: Do we need Him for aught but the drop of rain? We have rivers and wells to supply our wants.

So Noah responds, the first time (at least in the Jewish tradition) he has done this. "Noah rebuked them, urging, 'Repent!'" and goes into more detail. Nowadays the "traditional" Jewish view is that Noah was not righteous, because "righteousness is all about what you do for your fellow man. And Noah does NOTHING for his fellow man."²⁷(Emphasis original)

 

The other part of 108a to stand out was a discussion between the rabbis as to whether saying Noah was "perfect in his generations", meant he would be relatively even more perfect in other generations, or less perfect. One compares him to wine in acid, the other to the scent of "spikenard oil" lying in refuse compared to lying among spices.

108b continues this evocative imagery continues in when Noah's neighbours laugh off his prediction claiming that whether the flood is of water or fire they can survive. The rabbis respond that the "waters of the flood were as severe as semen" (though R. Hisda then uses a more literal "hot water"). I'm fascinated as to what the main points of comparison were when they used this simile and quite what they thought they were doing using it. 

There's another sex-related passage later on: "Three copulated in the ark, and they were all punished — the dog, the raven, and Ham. The dog was doomed to be tied, the raven expectorates [his seed into his mate's mouth] and Ham was smitten in his skin" I've touched on Ham's 'punishment' already, but the other two touch on elements that are expanded elsewhere in the text. This passage seems to be used as a conclusion to a previous story about the raven complaining that he was sent out to hunt for land when he and his mate were the only ones of their species (in contrast to the kosher birds). Hence why next time Noah sends out the dove which Neril and Dee interpret as an act of "preserving the diversity of life on earth".²⁸

That's not an explicit motivation the text makes, but elsewhere, in similar fashion, it does suggest "an intimate knowledge of and desire to learn from animals" with a lengthy story about Noah's discovery of what to feed the chameleon which also expresses the attention they gave to all the animals about how and when to feed them.²⁹ There's something particularly touching about this story and the connected one about the phoenix. 

Sibylline Oracles

The Sibylline Oracles sit awkwardly on this list, a strange mix of prophetic utterances that reflect a hotpotch of religious and cultural backgrounds: Jewish, Christian, pagan, Hellenistic, Gnostic. The majority of the flood material lies in Book I, lines 149-343, which seems to be Christian in origin.³⁰ While the Sibylline Oracles were composed over centuries, we're looking at a final dating of around the 6th or 7th century CE. Interestingly, both Book I (lines 350-54) and Book III (lines 1023-28) claims to have been written by Noah's daughter-in-law, despite them seeming to have different origins.

Book I is considered Christian in origin and certainly the way that almost a third of the total number of lines, 186-243, are given over to Noah's preaching to the people to repent, seems very different from anything we've seen so far in the Jewish takes on this story, though Josephus (1.74) does mention this briefly. We do find this idea of a preaching Noah in the New Testament though, in 2 Peter 2:5 which calls Noah "a herald of righteousness". He is also rebuked by the people who are recorded "(c)alling him mad, a frenzy-smitten man" (line 214).

Strangely, though, aside from its apocalyptic tone there's not that much of note, aside from perhaps the implication, and it is a little ambiguous, that God both shuts the door and bolts them in. So the Sibylline version of the story is perhaps best summed up by Seth Sanders "The Sibylline Noah anticipates his own misery at human suffering, tempered by awe at the flood’s sheer apocalyptic wonder".³¹

Tanchuma Noach (aka Tanhuma Noah or Tanakh Noah)

Tanchuma Noach is part of Midrash Tanchuma (or Yelammedenu), a midrash on the first five books of the Hebrew Bible with its original version dating from sometime around 500-800 CE. Noach is the second of 54 sections and it consists of 19 simans. Each consists of the rabbis expanding on the biblical text like the sources above.

A few things stand out here as the tradition progresses. Siman 5 says, for example, that not only was Noah righteous, but that "(e)ven Noah's sons, the animals, the beasts, the birds and the creeping things that accompanied him onto the ark were righteous". Moreover, it considers Noah so righteous that he was born circumcised. This is an interesting development from some of the rabbis from Sanhedrin 108b who consider  his righteousness to be only relative to his time. That discussion crops up again here only with a bit of a twist, the fragrant substance is now "Balsam oil" being placed  in a "filthy area" as opposed to a "clean"/"attractive" area. Again this seems to resonate with modern ideas about pollution, albeit as a metaphor.

Again we have Noah being mocked for telling the people God has ordered him to build an ark, but here things go further in Siman 7. The giants, eventually realise their fate, and try and storm the ark only for God to send lions to protect them and prevent these "mighty" men forcing their way on board the ark. This links to the watchers protecting the ark from Tubal-Cain's people in the film as well as giving some acknowledgement to "those about whom the biblical text is silent".³² Lions appear later as well in Siman 9 where a lion bites Noah so severely that "he left the ark crippled".

Elsewhere in we hear that Noah and his family didn't sleep because of feeding duties (Siman 9), so Lilly suggests "(t)his tradition of sleep-deprivation offers a rich opportunity to explore Noah as a character on the edge of sanity".³³

The other thing that stood out for me was the story in Siman 13 about Satan making a deal with Noah while he was planting his vineyard and then slaughters four animals there to make a point about the stages of alcohol consumption: people go from being as innocent as a lamb, to feeling as strong as a lion, then behaving like a pig before finally adopting the foolishness of an ape. "All this happened to the righteous Noah".

Sefer ha-Yashar (Tole dot Adam, Book of Jasher)

The first thing to explain with any title linked to "The Book of Jasher" is explain what it is not. This is not the Book of Jasher referred to frequently in the Hebrew Bible, which seemingly forms part of its source material, nor is it the 18th century forgery claiming to be the same. To make things even more confusing there's also another Jewish text from the middle ages called Sefer ha-Yashar/The Book of Jasher which is an ethical text. 

The one I'm looking at here is a medieval midrash, which can be read here (despite the initial pages of the scan it covers Genesis as well). The Hebrew title Sefer ha-Yashar, translates as "The Book of Righteousness". I've given a date of 1000CE above but that is probably the earliest feasible date. The latest date is 1625 when the earliest remaining copy was printed. Whereas the last few sources above have been styled around discussions between rabbis, this returns to a more "scriptural" format such that those not overly familiar with Genesis would find it difficult to distinguish between the two. It also feels like it branched off from those previous accounts at a much earlier stage, it doesn't seem to be building on those discussions. 

 
There are a few discrepancies about some of the details of Noah's descendants and different timings in places, and his wife's name is again given as Naameh (5:15). Narratively there's a quirky story about a lioness, and of animals having to humble themselves to be permitted entry, with unsuccessful ones remaining by the ark for seven days before the rain began (6:1-10). The flood itself is preceded by an earthquake and various other bits of apocalyptic imagery which actually feel similar in tone to Michael Curtiz's Noah's Ark (1929).

The bit that feels most like Aronofsky's film, and perhaps least like Genesis is 6:17-25 where 700,000 people gather round the ark having realised their error and repenting, but Noah does not relent. As part of his rebuke to them he mentions that he had spoken of this 120 years ago and they had ignored him. Infuriated the people try and 'storm' the ark but this time all the animals (not just the lions as in Tanchuma Noach) prevent them from doing so.

Those inside the ark are also frightened and anxious (6:28-33) with cries of the apex predators being detailed. Once the rain stops and the waters subside there's no sending of birds (God instructs them when to leave) and no mention of Noah planting vineyards or getting drunk. We do get an additional interesting detail about the skin garments that God had given Adam and Eve being passed down the family line to Noah who brings them on board the ark (7:24-30). Echoes here of Aronofsky's snakeskin. Moreover, Ham then steals them, passes them to Cush who clothes Nimrod in them which means God gives him strength.

Later sources

When I started writing this blog post several weeks ago now, I had hoped to follow it up with one about later Jewish mystic texts, such as those of Kabbalah e.g. Zohar, but my deadline is sooner than I had remembered and the chapter itself is only meant to be 5000 words and this blog post alone is already longer than that, so I need to focus. Perhaps I'll return at a later stage. I'm still planning to do something on Enoch, but even that might be a push now. We'll see. I say we, but I must admit I have my doubts that after 5000 words about obscure texts on a now out of the way weblog I'm not sure anyone is still reading at this point. So let me know if you made it this far!

===========

1. Nickelsburg, George W.E. and James C. Vanderkam (2012) 1 Enoch: The Hermeneia Translation (Minneapolis: Fortress Press). Ebook loc.47.

2. Vanderkam, James C. (2020) Jubilees: The Hermeneia Translation (Minneapolis: Fortress Press). Ebook loc.110.

3. Kugel, James (2014) The Book Of Jubilees, The Oldest Commentary On Genesis. Audio recording. Available online: https://archive.org/details/TheBookOfJubileesTheOldestCommentaryOnGenesis

4. Chattaway, Peter (2012), "A Few New Details about Aronofsky's Noah", FilmChat Aug. 9. Available online: https://www.patheos.com/blogs/filmchat/2012/08/a-few-new-details-about-darren-aronofskys-noah.html 

5. Vermes, Geza (1976) The Dead Sea Scrolls in English (Penguin). 2nd edition. p.215.

6. Martinez, Florentino García (1994) Dead Sea Scrolls: The Qumran Texts in English (Leiden/New York / Cologne: E.J.Brill). p.231. (which you can read here)

7. Collins, Matthew A. (2017) "An Ongoing Tradition: Aronofsky's Noah as 21st-Century Rewritten Scripture" in Rhonda Burnette-Bletsch and Jon Morgan (eds) Noah as Antihero (Abingdon/New York: Routledge). p.15.

8. Martinez, p.231

9. Collins p.17

10. Vermes, Geza (1998) The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English (Penguin) 4th Edition. p.518.

11. Martinez, p.224-5.

12. Collins p.15

13. Russell, D.S. (1987) The Old Testament and Pseudepigrapha: Patrirachs and Prophets in Early Judaism (London:SCM Press), p.97.
14. Wykes, James (2012) The Contextualized Noah: The Deluge Patriarch in Genesis, Jubilees, and Pseudo-Philo Master's. Unpublished thesis (University of Dayton). pp.55-74. Available online: https://www.academia.edu/3631710/The_Contextualized_Noah_The_Deluge_Patriarch_in_Genesis_Jubilees_and_Pseudo_Philo

15. Wykes, quote from p.74. Observation about Church Fathers from n232, p.66.

16. Freedman, H. and M. Simon (1961) Midrash Rabbah (London:Soncino Fine Arts Society). 3rd edition. p.XXVII.

17. Lee, Lydia "The Flood Narratives in Gen 6-9 and Darren Aronofsky’s Film Noah" in Old Testament Essays 29/2 (2016): 297-317. p.303 n24.

18. Lee p.302, esp. n17

19. Neril, Yonatan and Lee Dee (2020) Eco Bible: Volume 1: An Ecological Commentar on Genesis and Exodus (Interfaith Center for Sustainable Development). p.21.

20. Neril pages as cited

21. Neril p.26

22. Dennis, Geoffrey (2014) "Tzohar: Gem of Noah, Light of Heaven" at Jewish Myth, Magic and Mysticism (blog). 2nd April 2014 - Available online: https://ejmmm2007.blogspot.com/2008/10/tzohar-miraculous-light-of-noah-window.html

23. Dennis

24. Neril (p.20 (+21 & n118))

25. Sanders, Seth (2014) "Noah: The Movie" for Religion in the News (Hartford CT: Trinity College). November 18. Available online: https://commons.trincoll.edu/religioninthenews/2014/11/18/92/

26. Neusner, Jacob (1995) "Foreword" in Cohen, Abraham Everyman's Talmud (New York: Shockhen Books). First published 1949. p.x-xi.

27. Shmuley Boteach cited in Chattaway, Peter (2014) "The Jewish roots of — and responses to — Noah" Patheos: FilmChat 31 Mar 2014.
Available online: https://www.patheos.com/blogs/filmchat/2014/03/the-jewish-roots-of-and-responses-to-noah.html

28. Neril p.24 

29. Lilly, Ingrid E. “Rock Giants and the Magic Stone of Torah.” in Rhonda Burnette-Bletsch and Jon Morgan (eds) Noah as Antihero (Abingdon/New York: Routledge). p.40

30. Collins mentions the Sibylline Oracles in the same sentence as "Cave of Treasures" (p.15), but that is a more exclusively Christian text so I've not included it here.

31. Sanders

32. Collins p.17

33. Lilly p.40. She also cites Genesis Rabbah 30:6 as saying this, but really it only says that Noah fed "the whole twelve months in the Ark". This was probably the root for the rabbis elaboration here, but it's from them not Genesis Rabbah.

'Full' list of Noah and the Ark films

The above still is from Ermanno Olmi's Genesi: La creazione e il diluvio (Genesis: Creation and Flood, 1994) part of The Bible Collection. 

Many years ago I posted a "full list" of Adam and Eve films though it's perhaps not as complete as I thought it was back then. Nevertheless, given I'm looking at Noah films at the moment, I thought it was about time I posted a similar list of films about the flood and Noah. 

I've restricted these to films which either try and tell the story set in the ancient world, or that are offering a direct modernisation. That means I'm excluding films like Peter Weir's The Last Wave (1977) which offer modern parallels, but not explicitly, or Moonrise Kingdom (2012) which draw on the imagery and meaning, but aren't really 'doing the story' so to speak. Due to the short amount of material available I am including films where the Noah segment is only a significant part of a longer movie. I have included a couple of documentaries with dramatised sections, but I'm not sure about those. I might take them out later!

I'll be adding to this as I go along over the next few weeks, but for now, here's the list:

• The Tale of the Ark (dir. Arthur Melbourne Cooper, UK: 1909)
• The Deluge (dir. Richard Strauss, USA: 1911)
• Photoplay of Creation (dir. Charles Taze Russell, USA: 1914)
• La Sacra Bibbia (dir. Armando Vay & Piero Antonio Gariazzo, Italy: 1920)
• The Bible: The Deluge (dir. Rev Harwood Huntington & Edgar J Banks, USA: 1922)
• The Bible: Noah and the Ark (dir. Rev Harwood Huntington & Edgar J Banks, USA: 1922)
• Noah's Ark (dir. Michael Curtiz, USA: 1928)
• Amateur Night on the Ark (dir. Paul Terry, USA: 1923)
• Noah's Lark (Dave Fleischer, USA: 1929)
• Father Noah's Ark (dir. Wilfred Jackson, USA: 1933)
• Deluge (dir. Felix E. Feist, USA: 1933)
• Noah (BBC) (dir. André Obey, UK: 1946)
• The Green Pastures (dir. Marc Connelly & William Keighley, USA: 1936)
• Noah's Ark (dir. Bill Justice, USA: 1959)
• Noah (pr. BBC, UK: 1960)
• Mel-o-Toons: Noah's Ark (dir. unknown, USA: 1960)
• I patriarchi (dir. Marcello Baldi, It: 1963)
• Noah (wr. Joost van den Vondel, Belgian: 1964)
• The Bible : In the Beginning (dir. John Huston, USA/It: 1966)
• Mister Magoo's Noah's Ark (dir. Abe Levitow, USA: 1965)
• Yogi's Ark Lark (dir. Joseph Barbera & William Hanna, USA: 1972)
• In Search of Noah's Ark (dir. James L Conway, USA: 1976)
• Greatest Heroes of the Bible: The Story of Noah (dir. James L Conway, USA: 1978)
• Genesis Project: The Bible: Genesis (Prod: Campus Crusade, US: 1979)
• The Greatest Adventure: Stories from the Bible: Noah's Ark (dir. Don Lusk; Ray Patterson, USA: 1986)
• In the Beginning: The Story of Noah (dir: Osamu Tezuka, Jp/It: 1986)
• Die Arche (dir. Klaus Georgi, E.Germany: 1987)
• Noah (dir. Thomas Stephan, E.Germany: 1990)
• Animaniacs: Noah's Lark (dir. Greg Reyna, USA: 1993)
• Genesis. Creation and the flood (Genesi: La creazione e il diluvio, dir. Ermanno Olmi , It/D/USA: 1994)
• Enchanted Tales: Noah's Ark (dir. Hazel Morgan, USA: 1994)
• Testament: The Bible in Animation: Creation and the Flood (dir. Yuri Kulakov, Russia/UK: 1996)
• Noah's Magic Ark (dir. Laura Shepherd, USA: 1996)
• Prophets Stories: Story of Nuh (dir. unknown, Egypt: 1998)
• Noah (dir. Ken Kwapis, USA: 1998)
• Noah's Ark (dir. John Irvin, D/USA: 1999)
• Fantasia 2000 (dir. James Algar, Gaëtan & Paul Brizzi, USA: 1999)
• Noah: He Walked With God (prod. Jehovah’s Witnesses, USA: 2004)  
• Evan Almighty (dir. Tom Shadyac , USA: 2007)
• Ark (dir. Grzegorz Jonkajtys, Marcin Kobylecki., Poland: 2007)
• El arca (dir. Juan Pablo Buscarini, Argentina/Italy: 2007)
• The God Complex (dir. Mark Pirro, USA: 2008)
• Veggie Tales: Minnesota Cuke and the Search for Noah's Umbrella (dir. Mike Nawrocki & John Wahba, USA: 2009)
• The Search for Noah's Ark (dir. Matt Bennett, UK: 2012)
• Unogumbe (Noye's Fludde) (dir. Mark Dornford May, South Africa: 2013)
• The Bible (dir. Crispin Reece, US: 2013)
• Noah (dir. Darren Aronofsky , USA: 2014)
• The Ark (dir. Kenneth Glenaan, UK: 2015)
• Veggie Tales: Noah's Ark (dir. Mike Nawrocki, USA: 2015)
• Oops Noah has gone (Two by Two) (dir. Toby Genkel & Sean McCormack, Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg, Ireland, USA: 2015)
• Stories of the Prophets: Prophet Nuh (prod.Visagaar Entertainments, 2017)
• Good Omens (dir. Douglas Mackinnon, UK/USA: 2019)
• Noah (dir. Douglas Mackinnon [Sight & Sound], UK/USA: 2019)
• Noah and the Flood (dir. Robert Savo, Bulgaria/Morocco: 2021)
• Days of Noah (dir. Dalton Thomas, Israel: 2022)
• Ark and the Darkness (dir. Ralph Strean, USA: 2024)
• Gênesis (Series) (prod. Record TV, Brazil: 2024)
• Noah's Ark: A Musical Adventure/Arca de Noé (dir. Alois Di Leo, Sergio Machado, Brazil/India/US: 2024)

A few notes

I've gone round and round in circles as to whether to include Amateur Night on the Ark (1923) and/or Noah's Lark (Dave Fleischer, USA: 1929) but ultimately decided to keep them both in, partly due to their proximity to one another both historically and in how they handle the material. Both are early, animated, black and white cartoon from the late silent era which use aspects of the Noah story in a more modern context, with a certain amount of anthropomorphising of the animals. For me, though, aside from the use of the word Ark and the presence of animals and an older man, Amateur Night has little to do with the flood story, other than cultural resonance. Noah's Lark, on the other hand, starts off recognisably as a modern-twist on the biblical tales, even if Fleischer's imagination and artistic freedom spins it off far beyond the expected edges of what that usually entails. They're both available on YouTube so let me know below if you disagree. 

There's a little more about Felix E. Feist's Deluge in this BFI article about disaster movies. It wrongly, in my opinion, calls it the first disaster movie. I think that title belongs to one of the early Last Days of Pompeii films, probably the 1908 one. Based on the description I'm also not entirely sure it merits its place on this list. But I'll leave it in for now.

I patriarchi (dir. Marcello Baldi, It: 1963) is often appended to the start of Giacobbe, l'uomo che lottò con Dio (Jacob: The Man Who Fought with God, 1963).  

Mister Magoo's Noah's Ark was perhaps released as part of a compilation of episodes called Mr Magoo at Sea along with his retelling of "Moby Dick" and Treasure Island (source TV Guide).

As with Amateur Night on the Ark above, Yogi's Ark Lark (Hanna Barbera, 1972), featuring Yogi Bear, Top Cat and a host of other Hanna-Barbera characters from the 1970s, probably falls the wrong side of the line in terms of it's use of the flood story. For one things there is no flood, and the only animals on-board are the anthropomorphised Bear and his friends, most of whom lack life partners. The title and biblical imagery is more of a prop for a round the world trip in search of the "Perfect Place" away from damage to their local environment(s).

One film I might have included but felt it didn't quite meet the criteria is The Noah (1975) written and directed by Daniel Bourla. It's a post-apocalyptic film best known for featuring Robert Strauss's last performance. From what I've read this is more metaphor than adaptation, but I may adjust this once I've actually seen it.

The two East German made short films Die Arche (1987) and Noah (1990) do appear to be different films, the first directed by Klaus Georgi, the latter (also known as Das Volk sind wir, that is we are the people) directed by Thomas Stephan. According to filmportal.de the latter was also part West German funded. 

An earlier version of this list included a title called L'Ancien Testament Tome: Le déluge (2005) cited by Verreth which he seems to have taken from this DVD set as the episode titles are identical. I can't quite read the writing at the bottom, but I did find another French website here which gives a cast list, and all of those actors performed in the 1978 series The Greatest Heroes of the Bible, already listed above. I suppose that could be an incredible coincidence, but that seems a pretty open and shut case. I could possibly have made a whole post about that detective job, and I suppose I still might if only to preserve the screen-grabs (I can't seem to that on archive.org at the moment).

"The Encyclopedia of the Bible and its Reception" entry on Noah includes The Story of the Prophet Nuh with Zaky (2009), but having watched this on YouTube, I don't think it really merits its place. It's not even an animation, just some narration over still images, with an occasional very basic animated effect.

An earlier version of this list included a title ¡Ups! El arca nos dejó (dir. Ana Medellín, Miguel Valdez-Lopez, 2015), but it turned out that this was an episode of a review show which covered Genkel & McCormack's film Two by Two, which incidentally has a separate IMDb page for a version of it called by another title All Creatures Big And Small (2015).

Gênesis (2024) is a Brazilian telenovella which is running at the time of posting. There's more about it on Record TV's website (the producers) including some footage from each episode, but I couldn't get all the way back to the start to count the episodes and I haven't the time right now to fully research it. Noah definitely features though.

 

Last updated: 21/10/2024